About this WWF 1980s pro wrestling blog

Longtime fan and journalist Scott Wallask writes about growing up watching WWF pro wrestling in the 1980s and getting balcony seats each month for the old Boston Garden matches, while also comparing current WWE plotlines to old-school angles.

Seeing I am now finally entering the new age era of Smart LED TV’s, I have been Netflixing all the old WWF Programming. In doing so I came across the Andre/Hogan match from WM 3 back in 1987. While watching this match and seeing how they set a new indoor attendance record of 93,173 I Googled whether or not this indoor attendance record still stood. To my amazement, the record was broken by the 2010 NBA All Star Game with a crowd of 108,713 at Dallas’ Cowboy Stadium. So WWF(E)’s attendance record stood for over 23 years. Any thoughts or ideas if WWE will try and break that record? Somehow I don’t see John Cena or CM Punk drawing any crowd of that magnitude.

One thing that’s completely discounted when comparing any figure from the 80s to the ‘modern’ era, such as Austin T-Shirts vs Hogan’s shirts, kids such as myself, alot of them, had no idea where to get these shirts. They never had them at major department stores like they do everywhere at a Walmart, or other department store today. In the 80s, it was still quasi “Sell off the back of a truck”.

Or even try to buy tickets to an event was a mystery (my parents were immigrants, had no credit card). I would have killed to go to WM3 as many others I knew too. But again, the whole process was alot tougher than the modern era, where the MACHINERY of the process is much more efficient and widespread. Overseas, I’m sure they got absolutely nothing. So you can hypothetically argue, if you adjust for industry ‘inflation’, WM3 really would have been the biggest thing ever.

My God, Ron Cumberledge — there’s a guy I haven’t thought about in probably decades. I can’t remember whether he was from the 80s or 90s for the WWF. There are actually quite a few clips of him online if you search for his name.